Frank O’Connor

Fiction Reader’s Block

We all see things with different eyes and it gets you nowhere hoping that one in a thousand will see things your way. J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country (1980). In his droll 1999 essay, ‘Reader’s Block’, Geoff Dyer describes suffering from what he calls a creeping condition whereby he finds himself staring … Read more

Covid-19: A New Irish Social Contract?

Surveying the demise of the Celtic Tiger, Fintan O’Toole devoted an opening essay ‘‘Do you know what a republic is?’ The Adventure and Misadventure of an Idea’ in Up the Republic! Towards a New Ireland (2012) to assessing the health of the Irish Republic. He considered its vitality based on the presence, or otherwise, of … Read more